Some of the world’s most successful athletes practice visualization before beginning a competition. What is visualization? According to the book “Dance Anatomy” “It’s the act of planting an intuitive thought and letting that image grow to increase performance.’ ‘When you repeatedly train your actions (with visualizations), you induce physiological changes and increase accuracy.”

Whether it was Michael Jordan envisioning a game-winning shot, Jack Nicholas imagining a sharp eighteen foot putt, or Tom Brady picturing himself throwing a thirty-yard touchdown pass, the idea is that if you spend time think about it or see it beforehand, the more likely you are to actually execute it in real life.

What does all this have to do with CRM and maps? Simple, the philosophy of visualizing to success in sports, works the same way in business and sales, if only you are willing to practice it. By adding mapping to your CRM that’s essentially what you are beginning to do. A mapping solution embedded within your CRM can do so much more for a company than just hand out simple directions, it will help you to:

Identify Potential Opportunities: Allows field sales reps to see who they are calling on, but also displays similar companies around them who they could be calling on.

Segmenting Your Audience: Helps marketers to visualize a target area and adjust or focus their message accordingly.

Increase Territory Value: Understanding who your target audience is and where they are located, quickly and simply by looking at a map, allows reps to talk to the right people and maximize time. Leading to overall greater success and efficiency.

Drive User Acceptance of CRM: By incorporating visual tools within CRM, users feel more comfortable in understanding and utilizing the information the system can provide.

You can even take it one step further and ask reps to take a moment to visualize having a successful call, making a successful presentation, or closing a deal before going into an actual meeting. It sounds silly, but is it any different than what those successful athletes are doing?

When you incorporate more visual information into the marketing and sales process the results are clear; you make better business decisions with the information, increase overall performance, and engage employees and the utilization of better data.